


come out of hiding (I’m right here beside you)

by hubblestars



Category: Holby City
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Fix-It, Fluff and Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-25
Updated: 2018-09-25
Packaged: 2019-07-17 15:13:30
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,470
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16098254
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hubblestars/pseuds/hubblestars
Summary: Gaskell finishes the surgery and Roxanna, broken and beautiful, wakes up.





	come out of hiding (I’m right here beside you)

**Author's Note:**

> canon?? I don’t know her! please enjoy <3

Henrik - curled up in the armchair beside Roxanna’s bed, his head at an awkward angle and his tie unusually loose - finds he can’t sleep without starting awake and checking the monitors beside Roxanna’s bed. It’s silly to worry, he thinks, gazing at the spot of moonlight that has drifted from the windows and cast half of Roxanna’s face in shadow, yet he can’t loosen the constriction in his chest, the feeling that perhaps something went wrong - perhaps she’ll never open her eyes again. Exhausted, half asleep, he watches for a flutter of eyelashes, or a twitch of her hand, to signal that she’s finally waking up.

He wants to reach out for Roxanna’s fingers and wrap them in his own, for his benefit as much as hers. Roxanna was always more tactile than he was, when they were younger; she would pull on his hand, or drift her fingers across his arm, or even just brush his side as she moved across the lab. Often, even now, Henrik wished to run a thumb along her cheek, or put an arm around her shoulder, but the time for casual touches (and the library, and unrestrained laughter) had well and truly passed. He reaches forward. And then pauses, his hand hovering above hers on the crisp sheets, before pulling back.

It’s been three nights since the surgery. Henrik has a feeling that it will haunt him for years to come, and so will the afterwards: this bright room and it’s constant beep is already imprinted on the inside of his brain. With her pale, closed face resting on the pillow in front of him, Henrik tries desperately to see her as she was before, smiling and free, but the two Roxanna’s (one broken and one giddy) have merged into one. Henrik runs his hand over his face and wishes for the morning.

Roxanna stirs in her sleep, uttering quiet murmurs and contorting her face with distress, and Henrik can’t hold back any longer; he takes her hand and rubs his thumb along the back of it as gently as he can. When she stills and sighs, he hopes it’s because of him (hopes she feels him reaching out to keep her company in whatever nightmares plague her sleep). He thinks he should’ve held her hand a long time ago. Henrik wonders, as he often does, what would’ve happened if he’d been brave enough and kissed her that night in the library; would she have kissed back, wrapped her hands around his neck to pull him closer? Would she smile against his mouth, and pull back because she was laughing too much? Would the both of them, laughing till they cried in the dull of the night, kiss and talk all evening, completely at peace?

A tear slips down Henrik’s cheek and stops beside his mouth.

Roxanna’s eyes flutter, and she stirs again, but this time Henrik looks up from his hunched position over her bed to see wide eyes looking back at him. He smiles, slightly, and goes to remove his hand, but she squeezes it before he can.

“Roxanna.” Henrik breathes. “You’re awake.”

“Am I? I hadn’t noticed.”

Roxanna attempts a smile, and Henrik loves her, and all her strength and bravery and kindness.

“Henrik, I’ve got so much to tell you, about John, about-”

Henrik shakes his head slightly.

“Hush,” He says, his thumb soft on the back of her hand, “Not now. You need to rest.”

“Soon, though.” She murmurs.

There’s an owl hooting, somewhere outside of the hospital, and Roxanna’s breathing is shallow and quiet, drifting through the room. Henrik just listens. Roxanna is watching him, waiting and thinking and so very far away. Henrik has always wondered where she goes when she gets that lost look in her eyes - and whether she would tell him if he asked.

“How long was I unconscious?” Roxanna asks, after a while.

“Three days.” Henrik says. His voice doesn’t falter but the past 72 hours (waiting, hoping, loving) have hurt. “I had no doubt you would wake up.”

“Yes you did.” Roxanna looks up to the ceiling. “You should have known I wouldn’t leave Holby… or you.”

“We wouldn’t survive a day without you.” Henrik says, and he means it in every possible way. Roxanna laces their fingers together but even the tenderness of the touch doesn’t smooth away the frown lines on her forehead, and the wrinkles by her eyes. He wants to kiss them all away, and he’s thought this all before, since the moment she came back to him.

“I know.” Roxanna meets his gaze and the look lasts too long, softened by the moonlight and the vulnerability of worry and trauma. “I know that.”

“I don’t think you do.” Henrik says, and his voice cracks, and there’s something precious to him about this moment that he wants to keep and put in his pocket. How inevitable that Henrik Hanssen - sensible, contained, and put together - should break in front of the only woman who he ever truly loved. “The reality of facing grief, of confronting Frederick’s death, and almost yours, perhaps brings the rather sad realisation that there are many important things throughout life that go unsaid. Often… it is not recommendable to hide away.”

Roxanna stares at him for a long moment.

“Henrik,” She whispers. “No matter what has happened between us and John, I have always cared about you, and I always will.”

“Indeed.” Henrik says. How brilliant of her to know what he means - she always did, after all. He can’t pretend like he didn’t want to scream I love you when she lay motionless and split open on the operating table, and whisper I love you against her cheek while she slept in this very bed, because the reality of seeing her almost dead made him realise that he hadn’t once said it while she was alive. “And I you.”

Was it enough to say I care about you and leave it at that? Was the enormity of this warm feeling burning in his chest - as bright and beautiful as the day they first met and he took her hand - a simple utterance of fondness in the dark of a hospital room? Could Henrik ever put into words how much Roxanna had helped him, and made him happy? It seemed an impossible task. No words, no small touch, was bold enough. As bold as her.

“In fact,” Henrik looks down at their intertwined hands and it is only the memory of his teenage self lying alone on his University bed - eyes closed - listening to the record Roxanna had trusted to him (a sweet part of herself) that makes him speak: “I rather think I should tell you that I love you, and have loved you for many years.”

Roxanna’s breath hitches and he sees a million moments between them: tea in the mornings before lectures; glances of mirth across the lab when John went on one of his rambles; a little text during a busy day at Holby that said good luck today! or stock up on coffee. Perhaps, Henrik thinks, when Roxanna pulls the back of his hand to her mouth and presses a soft kiss to his skin, it is enough to simply say what you feel, and live with it.

“Come here and kiss me.” She murmurs, and who is Henrik to disobey?

Henrik is trembling as he leans across the white sheets and the wires, and presses his mouth to hers. It is sad and joyous, all at once; sad, because now Henrik knows what it would have felt like to kiss her in the dark library over a medicine textbook, and it feels so sweet, so perfect, that he has to wonder why he didn’t. And joyous, because he is kissing Roxanna Macmillan, and she is kissing back, arching upwards with that same enthusiasm that he had seen so many times before, in the lab and in lectures and over a test tube. How precious, how wonderful, that he should have that same passion directed towards him? His heart, Henrik thinks, has stopped beating in his chest, and any moment now the blood will stop flowing to his arteries.

Hands in his hair and butterflies. Henrik feels like an awkward teenager, gangly and terrified, and just as he thought she would Roxanna smiles against his mouth and pulls back to laugh.

She laughs until there’s tears streaming down her cheeks and then Henrik’s laughing, too, the both of them clutching their stomachs like they might have when they were young and less burdened. They laugh until Roxanna’s eyes seem permanently crinkled at the corners with happiness and Henrik remembers what it feels like to be breathless with joy.

“I love you too,” Roxanna finally says. “You silly old man.”

 


End file.
